Franz Boehm (resistance fighter)

Franz Boehm was born in West Prussia, which is now in the Polish region of the Warmian–Masurian Voivodeship. He came from a family of German-Polish origin. His parents were teachers during the cultural struggle by Otto von Bismarck, which is why the family had to move to the Rhineland in 1893 by order of the authorities. In class, the father had rehearsed with his students a Christian hymn in Polish, such a thing was prohibited in West Prussia during the imperial period due to the Germanisation of the Polish people.[2] Franz Boehm was graduated from a secondary school in Mönchengladbach. After his philosophical and theological studies in Bonn, he was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Cologne in 1906. At his three chaplain positions in the Ruhr area, he was also active in the Polish pastoral care, as he speaks the Polish language.[3]

He took up his first assignment as a parish priest in 1917 at St. Catherine's Church in Düsseldorf. In his parish, he campaigned for the preservation of a Catholic elementary school that now bears his name. In this confrontation, Boehm displayed not only a very good knowledge of the Weimar Constitution, which guaranteed freedom of religion, but also an exceptional talent for motivating people to invigorate the Catholic faith.[4]

On January 4, 1923, Boehm was sent to the newly founded parish of Saint John Before the Latin Gate in Sieglar, near Bonn, where he quickly realized that he had to deal with the extreme political currents of the time, communism and national socialism. In his church bulletin and in his sermons from the pulpit, he left no doubt that he considered these two political currents to be incompatible with Christianity.[5] Boehm's resistance to National Socialism became problematic after the Nazis came to power in 1933. Supported by the Nazi mayor of Sieglar, the Gestapo repeatedly investigated Boehm and imposed numerous sanctions. In 1934 there were criminal proceedings, which were discontinued. Boehm's list of alleged misconduct is as long as it is absurd. "Ringling the bells to mark the return of the pilgrims from Rome and interrupting the National Socialist May Day celebrations" was, for example, one of the crimes of which the parish priest was accused.[6] In 1935, Boehm was banned from teaching religious education. At the same time he received his first expulsion from the governmental district of Cologne, which was lifted again in 1936 by an amnesty. The second and final expulsion followed in 1937. Boehm had to leave Sieglar and wait for the General Vicariate to assign him a new job. However, the archbishop's policy of protecting its own clergy did not make it possible for Boehm to receive a new pastorate directly. In letters, Boehm took the view that he had acted in Sieglar according to the motto “stand fast in one spirit, with one soul striving for the faith of the gospel; and in nothing affrighted by the adversaries” (Phil. 1:27 f.). Therefore, in a letter dated October 12, 1937, he asked the vicar general to "take pity on the physical and mental pressure" and to "assign him to a new place of work as soon as possible".[7]

In 1938 Boehm then took up a position as a parish priest in Monheim am Rhein. In his priestly work he continued to resist the Nazi regime. Boehm worked primarily with young people. He always countered the increasing escalation with the Bible verse: "they are all mute dogs, they cannot bark" (Is 56:10). The 450-page Gestapo files[8] show that he received a fine in 1938 and a warning in 1941 for worshiping in Polish. In 1942 he was sentenced to a security payment of 3,000 RM for a sermon on Christ the King. In his sermon, Boehm affirmed that there were no thousand-year kingdoms on earth, as there was only one kingdom that would last that long, namely the kingdom of Jesus Christ, which would last eternal. The Nazis saw this as a violation of the Law for the Stabilization of the Armed Forces.[9] Normally, such an accusation carried the death penalty. But the judges reduced the accusation to "hostile remarks against the state" (similar to a conviction under Pulpit Law).[10] At Easter 1944 he preached against the Nazi film industry, which led to his arrest. On June 5, 1944, he was arrested in the church immediately after a mass. In connection with the arrests around the 20 July plot, Boehm was transferred to the Priest Barracks of Dachau Concentration Camp. On August 11, 1944, he was taken to Dachau in a single transport because he had obviously been confused with the lawyer and economist Franz Böhm from Mannheim,[11] who belonged to the Freiburg Circles of the German resistance to Nazism.[12] Even a letter from the bishop could not change anything about the imprisonment. He died in the concentration camp on February 13, 1945, as a result of an illness caused by his imprisonment. The parish priest's body was cremated after his violent death. The ashes were either dumped in a nearby river or scattered on a field.[13]